The chair of Mount Ida College's board of trustees was on the hot seat Wednesday, facing questions and assignments of blame from state senators skeptical of a proposed deal involving UMass acquiring the small private institution.

Flanked by two attorneys representing the college, Carmin Reiss, the board chair, defended the deal, saying it was preferable to the college declaring bankruptcy.

Mount Ida is closing as UMass acquires its 74-acres and the buildings on its Newton, Mass. campus.

The chair of the committee, Sen. Kathleen O'Connor Ives, said she wants to convene another hearing and subpoena Brown, as well as other Mount Ida executives who didn't show up.

While state higher education officials are reviewing the deal, there is little they can do to block it, and UMass leaders have repeatedly said Mount Ida would be closing regardless of whether the university system got involved.

The controversial deal has led to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey launching an investigation into whether Mount Ida officials violated their fiduciary responsibilities amid the rush to close up shop and sell the campus.

Healey's office said that while the investigation is underway, they're allowing the UMass Amherst/Mount Ida deal to proceed because otherwise Mount Ida would have to file for bankruptcy, a more devastating outcome.

Asked about Healey's investigation on her way out of the state Senate hearing, Reiss told reporters, "That's a standard review, we welcome it and we're confident that we'll do just fine in that review."

Earlier merger talks with Lasell College, which is also a small private college in Newton, would have saddled Mount Ida with more debt, according to Reiss. Mount Ida was facing a long-developing liquidity crisis, and college executives renewed contact with UMass about a deal, years after first briefly talking to UMass officials in 2014 didn't amount to anything, she said.

Before the failed talks with Lasell, Mount Ida had attempted to implement a turnaround effort and increase enrollment, Reiss said.

Reiss pushed back on state senators who asked whether Mount Ida officials made moves to not disclose that the college was in financial shambles.

"Did we go out and announce, 'Hello, interested students, we're teetering on the brink of insolvency, come on in?'" Reiss said, noting that college's survival depended on increasing enrollment. "No, we didn't do that."

But their audited financial documents were publicly posted, she said.

Her answers didn't satisfy O'Connor Ives, the committee chair.

"She said during this hearing that they purposefully did not disclose to the students, the parents and the faculty that the college was in financial crisis - I'm paraphrasing her - on account of the reality that would make that an inevitability," O'Connor Ives said to reporters.

"So to know and to still continue to accept students while in the backrooms of the board of trustees you know you have debt, you have decaying infrastructure, you have obligations, you have a plan that internally you call a turnaround plan and publicly you call a vision plan, is extremely worrisome," O'Connor Ives said.

Sen. Dean Tran said he was baffled that Mount Ida leaders didn't disclose the full scope of the financial problems to students. "I hope you know that you are as much at fault as the leadership of Mount Ida," he said, directly addressing Reiss.

Earlier in the day, students appeared before the oversight panel and said when they visited campus, they were shown plans for the college's expansion and there was no mention of financial troubles.

Michelle Cunneen, a member of the faculty in the veterinary tech program, echoed students' frustrations.

"We didn't have any idea about the financial constraints," Cunneen told senators.